Tag Archives: mid century bar

I remember the first time I saw this style decanter. I thought it was soo atomic! Come to find out that they were designed by Raymond Loewy (Thanks Benjamin Cobb Storck for the info). From that point on I wanted to amass a small collection and make a custom decanter set for entertaining.

This was a straight forward and quick restoration. The good news was that the bottoms and tops separate from the bottle part which made painting them a breeze!

This is the spray paint I swear by. I purchase this paint from Michael’s crafts store. Other gold paint can look tacky, but this one looks period correct.

Another good thing about this paint is that it is quick drying. Seriously, it only took 10-15 minuets for the pieces to dry.

I found a place on eBay that makes custom decals. I thought this light pink with a gold border would compliment the gold body of the decanter. I have managed to find 7 decanters so far and am looking to get a total of 10.

This is the first bar we ever bought and restored. We purchased this one in the early 2000’s (sorry for quality of picture).

Of course our beloved and rare Witco Tahiti Bar that we will be buried with, ha ha. We think a bar is a necessary piece to have in a home for entertaining. We think society needs more reasons to socialize with neighbors and friends, and what a better way to do it than sipping a drink at your own bar.

I drove down to Manteca, California a few months back because we needed some stools for our kitchen counter. I had been wanting to get my hands on a couple of vintage Cosco stools and this was my opportunity.

The metal parts of the stools were in rough shape. There was a lot of surface rust on the chrome, but I have a trick for that!

The first thing I had to do was separate the upholstered backrest and seat portions from the metal frame.

I separated the fabric from the cushions. Not pretty, but it will be recovered soon!

Here is the bottom of the seat cushion of the stool

Here is the seat bottom frame. This chair has an archaic bearing system. It is made up of metal bearings with wood spacers. They sit loosely in the bottom seat pan….crazy!

Next, I had to prep the metal seat backs and bottoms. I decided to spray them a cream color.

Once they were sprayed I hung them with wires until they were dry.

Then, I turned my attention to the chrome frames. As you can see, they have a good amount of surface rust.

A cheap alternative to using a buffing wheel to remove surface rust from chrome is to use a cleaner like Awesome and some 0000 steel wool. A lot of folks with chrome dinettes use this process to rejuvenate the chrome surfaces. Unfortunately, if this process is used over a long period of time it will dull the chrome finish. I prefer dull over rust….how about you?

Hello all, Mel and I thought it was time to show you our TIKI room. As with anything in our home things are never finished, so let this just be a tour of its current state.

Though not everything in this room is tiki, it all seems to work.

We collect random TIKI items. Our goal is to make this room as diverse as possible.

This room has a lot of windows so I had to get creative with how to hang art. These Carlo watercolors look great in front of the chartreuse curtains.

Here are a couple of the pieces I painted.

As you may notice, the floors are concrete. It originally had vintage asbestos tiles. Unfortunately, numerous tiles were missing or damaged, so we decide to remove them all. We haven’t decided what we’re going to do with the floor yet.

We hope you enjoyed this tour. I am sure it will change and evolve as time goes on. Later, we plan on showcasing the rest of the house, stay tuned.

Mel and I have been scouring the internet to find stools for our kitchen counter. We had a heck of a time finding something that was appropriate for our decor. We finally found a set of Dee Mfg. stools on eBay that we thought would look great. When they arrived the bases and cushions were separate and there was no hardware!

When these arrived they were pretty farm fresh. The cushions are in great shape with some character. The metal frames had a lot of surface rust.

The cushions are a light pink with black, gray and chartreuse accents.

Each of the stools still had the Dee Mfg. Corp. tags.

crusty and rusty but not for long…

When sanding pieces like this I like to use a foam sanding block. It allows you to get a in all those tough areas.

Here is one base done compared to one of the unrestored bases.

Here they are all painted and set out to dry. Once they dried I attached the bases and cushions with self tapping screws.

We really like the way these turned out. They are simple, but the upholstery is what makes these stools.

Here is the original ad of the Witco Tahiti bar. This bar is out of sight and is one of the most ornate bars produced by Witco that I have ever seen.

Mel and I came across this bar while searching Craigslist. I thought it might be Witco so we shot down and nabbed it.

The bars finish was really dry and the varnish on top was missing in some spots and peeling off on others.

Mel and I decided to try to recapture the original finish of the bar top by using Famowood Glaze Coat Gloss Polyurethane. This stuff is great, it is equal to 80 coats of varnish but can be pretty messy.

Here you can see one of the stools is stained and polyurethane applied while the other is in as found condition. I used Minwax Golden Oak as the color stain I thought best matched the original finish.

Here are the stools all done. We plan to have the cushions recovered in zebra pattern fabric by B&T Upholstery.

Here is the top refinished. We didn’t do too bad considering it was our first time using a glaze coat. I plan to also get a piece of glass cut to make sure the top doesn’t get messed up from use.

The wood looks so great with the refreshing it received.

This will be a real conversation piece for our tiki room. We just love how ornate it is.

The pictures really don’t do this bar justice. The wood grain is phenomenal in person.